the forbidden colors
..warriors of Huaa tribe paint their faces into a rainbow before a battle. The night before shaman reads the sky and forbids them to use certain colours, because it would make them vulnerable to wounds and death. However, if they use the forbidden colours and defeat the enemy, they acquire the highest status in the tribe... ............................................................................ Apothecary jars and heavy mortars protected me since the first day. The world was huge and fit snugly in the palm of my hand. Between the cascade of my grandmother's ivy and the sunny windowsill everything was possible ............................................................................. Snow was coming heavier in winter. I kept breaking the ice only to find more shards. They were deeper every year. I lost few things in a frozen lake never to see them again. Spontaneous summers occurred and snake seasons continued. Tropical thunder came and went with lush abundance. Swampy waters flooded frequently. Steel began to rust and our shoes were moldy but we survived another year ............................................................................. Constant humming of ocean washing the sand away and leaving the debris. Last visions before dawn. Promises made to a wet pillow. Acid clouds burning inside me. I tried to free myself burning candles, capture hope or ask for forgiveness with faded petals or sulphur. Squeaky cogs kept going day and night, sometimes exploding with a broken spring or hissing and melting away quietly. I kept ghosts at bay most of the time .............................................................................. Children were moving through leaving behind their colorful wrappings, words we haven't heard before and an odd teddy bear. Animals were generous with their droppings, shed skins and midnight squeaks. Meteors sent their blessings. Birds hid in the waterfall of fragrant jasmine. We collected their empty nests. Screws and washers in jars. Shoeboxes under beds. We piled up books, tools, paintings, gemstones and driftwood, thinking we will stay another millennium. We wrapped secrets in jeans and hid deceit under a pillow but the cracks got wider. They kept crumbling apart and we had to leave with a suitcase ............................................................................. I summon the spirits now and reluctantly they come. I grow moss in gaps between the walls and often forget my daily prayers. Memory tastes metallic. The forbidden colours I used to paint with, tarnished and oxidized like patina on the pestle that keeps on grinding. But the time is running out we have to find that door ............................................................................................................................................................ so welcome to my blog - these are the windows to be grateful for that I discover every day, there is a passage to the other side somewhere, but I haven't found it yet .............................................................................. ............................................................................... ..............................................................................
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seattle theme by parker ehret
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Emerald Tree Boa (by DeathByAnArrow)
Katsuhiko Narita
SUMI (1968/1988)
charcoal
francine vernac (via Pour la suite… images et mots: Aléatoire II)
“Rabalder” Acrylic and wood type print on canvas (2011)
Norman Mooney. Wall Flower #2, 2010, cast resin with pigment
"Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known."— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (via itsfullofstars)
by Elin Mack
(Source: p-dress)
